MICHAEL BENNET is the author of the Barry Award nominated Better the Blood and the nonfiction book In Dark Places, both of which won Ngaio Marsh awards. He is also the author of the young adult graphic novel Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas which, along with Better the Blood, was a finalist for the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards.

ANNE DE MARCKEN lives in the United States on the unneeded land of the Coast Salish people. She is the founding editor and publisher of The 3rd Thing.

ANTONIO MICHAEL DOWNING is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy and children’s book, Stars in My Crown. Antonio Michael is the current host of the CBC Radio program The Next Chapter. Black Cherokee is his debut novel.

FIONA MACFARLANE’s first novel, The Night Guest, won several prizes including the Voss Literary Prize and a New South Wales Premier’s Award. It was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, among others. She is also the author of a short-story collection, The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Best Australian Stories. Her second novel, The Sun Walks Down, will be published in Australia (October 2022), the United States (February 2023), and the UK (March 2023). McFarlane grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

BENJAMIN MILLMAN is a pianist, producer and multi instrumentalist hailing from Vancouver BC. Specializing in a large range of genres and instruments, Benjamin's performance credits are vast - you may have heard him leading Rnb, Funk, Pop or Jazz groups at countless Vancouver venues such as the Vogue and the Fox Cabaret, singing in choirs to sold out crowds at the Rogers Arena and PNE Forum Stage, or touring with a variety of different acts on the keys, guitar or percussion around Canada and the US. His mission is to make honest, artful, and groovy music, and to pay homage to the great legacy of the Black American and African Diasporic Music he loves!

MICHAEL REDHILL is the author of many books including the novels Martin Sloane, shortlisted for the Giller Prize and winner of the Books in Canada First Novel Award, Consolation, long listed for the Man Booker Prize; and Bellevue Square, winner of the 2017 Giller Prize.

DANEZ SMITH is the author of four poetry collections: [insert] boy, Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff.  They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez was won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, as well as an array of grants, fellowships, and residencies including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Princeton Arts Fellowship. Danez lives in the Twin Cities with their people and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, MN.